aps I should be less glad. Do you think Don Alberto's
fine black hair is his own, dear; and are his legs quite real?'

'Without doubt.'

'Then I think you ought to be just a little less glad that he stares at
me, than if his legs were padded and he wore a wig as the Queen does,
and were forty, as she is, with bad teeth and a muddy complexion like
hers! You know you should be just a very little less pleased, dear!'

In the moonlight he could see her smiling, for her face was close to
his, and she had laid her hands on his shoulders, while she still knelt
at his knees.

'But that would mean that I was jealous, dear heart,' objected
Stradella. 'Why am I to be jealous because he admires you, unless you
like him too much? Most women say that a man is a brute to be jealous at
all till they have run away with some one else! Your uncle, for
instance, is really justified in being jealous of me.'

'Really?'

Ortensia laughed and kissed again before saying anything more; and just
as their lips touched, the silver light began to fail, and the young
moon dropped behind the Vatican Hill, and when they separated it seemed
quite dark by comparison. Now any one can easily find out how long it
takes the moon to set after she has touched the shoulder of a hill; and
hence the exact number of seconds during which that particular kiss
lasted can easily be ascertained. But time, as Danish people say, was
made for shoemakers; and Ortensia and Stradella took no account of it,
but behaved in the most foolishly dilatory way, just as if they were not
a plain, humdrum, married couple that should have known better than to
spend the evening in a balcony, alternately sentimentalising, kissing,
and singing love-songs.

That was the last evening they spent at the Sign of the Bear, and though
they had talked idly enough in the loggia under the light of the young
moon about such very grave subjects as jealousy and envy, they
afterwards cherished ineffaceable memories of that sweet June night.

For there had been an interlude in the comedy of their troubles,
wherein love had dwelt with them alone and in peace, making his
treasures fully known to them, and guiding their footsteps while they
explored his kingdom and his palace; and they both felt instinctively
that the interlude was over now, and that real life must begin again
with their change of lodgings. Stradella was a musician and a singer,
without settled fortune, and he must return to the bu